Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 16



Idaho

SHOCK AND DISBELIEF filled the students and instructors as the rafts glided away. They cried out; they shouted accusations and blame; they yelled and shrieked until their throats grew hoarse.

None of them was aware of the eyes watching them.

Instead, their minds focused on the backpacks and gear lost. Food, tents, bedrolls, tools, supplies, as well as the professor's map and satellite communication equipment remained strapped to the rafts.

Devlin cursed and ran along the river bank after the disappearing guides. Brian followed. The small beach area soon ended, replaced by rough, rocky land that sloped upward. As they climbed, the Salmon stretched in front of them. The banks grew steeper, however, and the brambles thicker. Soon, they gave up and returned to the others.

“It’s all right,” Rempart announced, to everyone’s amazement. “They may have taken our things, but they also brought us closer to our destination than we ever would have been on our own. It’s now up to us to find the ‘Double Needles’ as they called them, and then get on about our business. I still have the maps.” He patted his breast pocket. “We can catch fish, and eat nuts and berries for a few days. Live off nature’s bounty! We’ll be just fine. Let’s go.” He waved an arm and headed north.

“Shit,” Devlin said to Brian. “We lost our gear, we’re in the middle of nowhere. We should go home.”

Melisse eyed Devlin. “Scared are you?” she asked. “Okay, we were robbed. Big deal. We’re almost at the site, but instead of doing the job, you want to go home. You aren’t cut out for anthropology!”

“She’s right,” Vince said, moving closer to Melisse as he adjusted his glasses higher on his nose. “I’m not giving up.”

Melisse and Vince followed Rempart.

“Hell,” Devlin muttered, and then he and the others followed as well.

Evening arrived before they found a stream. By then, they felt so hungry that nature’s bounty didn’t look very plentiful.

“How are we supposed to fish without hooks or lines,” Devlin muttered.

“The earliest people here,” Rempart said, “had no metal hooks. You young people were raised in Idaho. I should think you’d know something about roughing it.”

Devlin stared at Rempart as if the man was delusional, then he and Brian went off to find something edible.

They followed the creek and climbed a hill along its bank to a wide, flat area. To their amazement, it held several bushes with small round berries. “Hey, are these huckleberries?” Devlin said as he took a tentative taste.

Brian plopped a berry in his mouth. “Whatever, they aren’t bad.”

“They’re food. That’s all I care about.” The small berries tasted tart. Neither of them had ever eaten raw huckleberries, so they didn’t know what to expect.

They planned to eat enough to stop their stomachs from growling, and then pick the rest for the others. Huckleberries weren’t usually found this late in the year, but they guessed the berries hadn’t ripened by August as normal due to the high elevation.

A strange snort sounded nearby, causing them to stop and listen, but then all went silent again. “Probably just something small,” Devlin said.

“Yeah.” Brian plopped two more berries in his mouth. “Something very small.”

They kept eating even though the sense of being watched grew stronger.

“Do you trust Rempart?” Brian asked quietly after a long silence.

“Hell, no! He’s an a*shole,” Devlin said.

“That’s right,” Brian chuckled, then took another mouthful. “The dumb f*ck’s going get us all killed!”

“We should forget about the place Rempart wants to find and get the hell back home,” Devlin said. “Stupid berries don’t do it for me. I’m a meat eater.” He pointed to his teeth. “I don’t have these incisors for nothing.”

They both laughed, trying to dispel the odd tension in the air.

“I think I ate too many of these.” Brian made a face and began to rub his stomach. The berries had stained his hands and mouth purple. He’d been so hungry that he shoveled them in as fast as he could pick them. Now, though, he stopped and looked at the berry bushes carefully. “Are you sure these are huckleberries?”

“Didn't you say they are?” Devlin noticed his stomach started to ache, too.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” Brian stumbled away.

“Don’t you dare get sick anywhere where I can hear, see, or smell it!” Devlin said. “I want to keep my belly full, no matter what the hell I’ve just eaten.”

Brian would have laughed, but he felt too queasy. He didn’t want to look like a baby in front of Devlin. When his stomach started to heave, he clamped his hand over his mouth and ran behind the bushes, back towards the ledge.

Devlin stood alone. He looked around him. He didn’t like being here. They probably shouldn’t have wandered so far from the others. But then, if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have found the huckleberries. The berries were fine, he decided; they’d simply eaten too many, too fast.

“Brian?” he called. “Brian, are you okay?”

No answer.

“Brian?”

Devlin ran in the direction Brian had headed. He got there, but didn’t see any sign of his friend. “Brian? Come on, is this a joke? It’s not funny, Bri!”

He couldn’t imagine Brian going to the edge of the hill they climbed earlier. Nevertheless, he went there and looked down. The bottom lay far below. He scanned the creek and the land along its banks. He didn’t see Brian. He called over and over.

Brian wouldn’t joke. He had never gone far from Devlin’s side on this trip, and there was no reason to think he’d start now.

Devlin called and searched another couple of minutes. When he heard that same, strange, animal snorting sound as he’d heard earlier, he scurried like a scared rabbit back to the area Rempart had designated as their camp.